Tag Archives: art

New York based artist extraordinaire David Sena, is not the first and certainly will not be the last to use fireworks in his art creations, but he is using them in a very different way. David states that he likes the kinetic energy behind the short burst of flame and explosive power in his firework drawings.

He graduated from the Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art and has continued in his unusual approach. As a very talented artist, tattooist and fine art specialist, his work is really good and cleverly uses a number of mediums to get his art across to the masses.

In his fire drawing he uses mainly jumping jacks (no longer available in the UK and today remembered only by those of us ‘of a certain age!’) and then once he has the burn he wants, he uses a rubber (eraser) and charcoal to create the finished product. Reaching for ever better impressions, he continues to play with multi dimensional 3D works.

When asked ‘why fireworks?’ he referred back to when he was a child and they fired any firecrackers or jumping jacks they invariably left scorch marks on the surface, whether it was wood, paper, concrete or dirt which in later life became the art form.

That was the general concern on Saturday 7th April 2012 as the world-famous Chinese artist Cai Guo-Qiang readied his explosion show outside the Geffen Contemporary at MOCA. After all, fireworks should go up, vertical, away from people – not towards them!

But Cai didn’t get his reputation as a world-renowned pyro artist by doing what’s expected. “Mystery Circle” would be no exception.

“You will witness something remarkable,” said Jeffrey Deitch, MOCA’s director, in his short opening remarks. He added, “It’s going to go by very quickly. Make sure you don’t miss it”.

You couldn’t if you tried. Around 1940 the sky rapidly darkened, the 2-minute warning was given, then it was 1 minute, 30 seconds, 10 seconds, a spirited countdown and then boom.

40,000 rockets, arranged on the northern wall of the Geffen Contemporary in a crop circle-like pattern, exploded outward in a massive display of light, heat and sound. The packed crowd gathered just a little to the side and at a safe distance away, went wild. Most cheered ecstatically; though many were seen to duck and cover.

“I think I pulled a muscle,” said one, straightening up after the explosion nearly toppled her. “It looked like a firework was about to hit me in the face!

But it wasn’t over. As the remnants of the crop circles burned on the wall, greenish UFO spinners were launched and, in the final phase, the headpiece of an alien god figure ignited in a finale of explosions. The whole shebang, part of the Cai’s lifelong project to connect with space and extraterrestrials through art, lasted a little under 2 minutes.

Everything might not have gone off exactly as planned, some people were left wondering whether the UFOs actually achieved lift off, but that’s part of Cai’s process: preparing meticulously, but accepting the unexpected.

Cai, who directed the visual and special effects for the opening and closing ceremonies of the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, still remembers his first time launching a single rocket at a canvas, when he was a young artist in the early 1980’s.

“Never did I think that 30 years later”, Cai said through a translator Saturday night, “I’d be using 40,000 rockets and lighting them off all at the same time”.